Center Staff
Director Peter S. Arno, PhD., is an economist, professor and director of the doctoral program in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the School of Health Sciences and Practice, New York Medical College. Previously, he was a professor of epidemiology and population health at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. He has been a Pew Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Institute for Health and Aging at UCSF, a Scholar of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and recipient of the Investigator Award in Health Policy from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Arno is co-author of Against the Odds: The Story of AIDS Drug Development, Politics & Profits, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His recent work includes studies of the economics of informal caregiving and long-term care; regulation and pricing practices of the pharmaceutical industry; public health and legal implications of regulating tobacco as a drug; innovation, access, quality and outcome measures related to HIV disease; and the impact of income support policies on population health. Based on this work, Dr. Arno has testified before numerous U.S. House and Senate committees. Dr Arno has been named to the 2013 TEDMED Caregiver Crisis Challenge Team. Challenge Team Members are leaders in their fields and reflect multi-disciplinary, passionate and thoughtful perspectives for the Challenge they represent.
Deputy Director Michael Gusmano, Ph.D., has published widely in the areas of health policy, aging, and comparative welfare state analysis, including his most recent book (with Victor Rodwin and Daniel Weisz), Health Care in World Cities. He serves as associate professor for the School of Health Sciences and Practice at NYMC and is a Research Scholar at The Hastings Center. His current research includes an investigation of health care equity in the US and other countries and an examination of the ethical and policy dimensions of care for patients with chronic cancer. Dr. Gusmano is the co-director of the World Cities Project—the first effort to compare the performance of health, social and long-term care systems in the four largest cities among the wealthy nations of the world: New York, London, Paris and Tokyo. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Maryland at College Park, an MPH from the State University of New York at Albany, and was post-doctoral fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy program at Yale University. Dr. Gusmano is a member of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Political Science Association (APSA) and serves as the secretary of APSA's Organized Section on Health Politics and Policy. He also is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.
Research Administrator Kenneth Knapp, Ph.D., is an economist and gerontologist with research interests in cost-benefit analyses of Taiji and Qigong as health interventions, the relationship between housing and access to long-term care, the influence of caregiving on quality of care, and the relationship between job opportunities and health of older members of society. Dr. Knapp is assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the School of Health Sciences and Practice at NYMC, senior associate for the non-profit China America Living Arts, and adjunct professor in the MPA/MPH program at the Seton Hall’s Department of Political Science and Public Affairs. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Graduate School at the City University of New York and a joint B.A./M.A. degree in economics from the City College of New York. Dr. Knapp has taught a wide variety of economics and public policy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Research Scholar Deborah Viola, Ph.D., is an associate professor and Associate Director, Doctoral Program, in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the New York Medical College School of Health Sciences and Practice. She received her doctorate in economics as a Robert E. Gilleece Fellow at the City University of New York and has directed the health economics program at NYMC for the past 14 years. Recently, her research interests have focused on regional health care planning, the impact of preconception on adverse birth outcomes, the economics of women as they age, long-term care for the developmentally disabled, emergency preparedness for vulnerable populations, and the impact of income support policies on population health. Active in several civic and professional organizations, Dr. Viola serves on the Board of Social Services for Bergen County, New Jersey; Upper Saddle River Board of Health; MarbleJam Kids, a non-profit organization serving children with autism spectrum disorders; and Vice-Chair and founding Board Member, MarbleRoad, whose mission is to connect people with complex illnesses to needed services.
Research Scholar Qiuhu Shi, Ph.D., professor and Director of Biostatistics in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Health at NYMC's School of Health Sciences and Practice. Dr. Shi's primary research interests include clinical trial design, planning and analysis, as well as statistical methodological research in building and testing prediction models in public health. He has co-authored over 50 articles in public health or clinical trial studies, been a co-investigator in several NIH grants, reviewed clinical papers for numerous journals, and taught graduate level biostatistics courses for more than 10 years.